Airbag fabrics can be inflated in or on motor vehicles in order to protect a person. The fabric in this case forms an airbag envelope capable of being filled with gas.
Due to the ever-increasing range of use of airbags, the conditions under which these are used are also increasingly more difficult and more material-intensive. For example, in the exterior region of motor vehicles, an airbag fabric has to satisfy ever higher requirements in terms of its resistance.
At the same time, the aim is to produce airbag modules which have as small a build as possible. For this purpose, the folded airbag must have as small a surface spread as possible, so that the volume of the airbag in the folded state is as small as possible.
Possible causes for loss of pressure durability of an airbag in crash situations are often cuts or tears caused by sharp-edged fragments, for example fragments of a window pane of the motor vehicle which may act during a crash on the deployed (inflated) airbag, and also the friction of the airbag on abrasive contact surfaces, for example road asphalt. It is therefore difficult to implement restraint systems with sufficiently long pressure durability in the range of seconds.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,264,234 (incorporated by reference herein) discloses a side airbag module, with an airbag which is deployed between a lateral vehicle body and the vehicle occupant in the event of a crash. The airbag itself is constructed in two layers and includes a gas-tight inner bladder which can be filled with a flow medium in order to deploy the airbag, and also an outer resistant envelope for protecting the fillable inner bladder. In this case, however, there is the disadvantage that the airbag has overall a relatively high surface spread due to the additional protective outer envelope.